I found the article meaningless. He says best practices are what everyone is doing, therefore the embodiment of mediocrity.
I find "best practices" to be a useful checklist, especially in an area new to me. If someone says it's a best practice, I take a look. Ultimately I may decide their advice is of a little value.
The fourth commenter at the blog makes an excellent point: people call it 'best practices', but they are actually 'common practices'. The reason something is a common practice, is because it has been shown to work or, lacking measurements to proove that something works, because it makes sense and 'just works'.
Moreover, it's just a non-sequitur to conclude from 'mediocre company X does Y' that 'doing Y makes a company mediocre'. What makes a company mediocre is in the things they cannot single out in clear statements of the form 'we should change practice Z, as it is not good.
Also it could be called "best goals" instead. I've seen a lot of companies that lie about what they really do, specially those certified with ISO and family.
Comments
I found the article meaningless. He says best practices are what everyone is doing, therefore the embodiment of mediocrity.
I find "best practices" to be a useful checklist, especially in an area new to me. If someone says it's a best practice, I take a look. Ultimately I may decide their advice is of a little value.
The fourth commenter at the blog makes an excellent point: people call it 'best practices', but they are actually 'common practices'. The reason something is a common practice, is because it has been shown to work or, lacking measurements to proove that something works, because it makes sense and 'just works'.
Moreover, it's just a non-sequitur to conclude from 'mediocre company X does Y' that 'doing Y makes a company mediocre'. What makes a company mediocre is in the things they cannot single out in clear statements of the form 'we should change practice Z, as it is not good.
Also it could be called "best goals" instead. I've seen a lot of companies that lie about what they really do, specially those certified with ISO and family.